David Wilkie, “Blind Man’s Buff” (1812-13)
Monday
After reading my post about Charles Dickens returning Christmas to its medieval roots, a reader alerted me to an article declaring that an American author deserves some of the credit. Apparently Dickens was enchanted by Washington Irving’s essays about Squire Bracebridge’s English Christmas. According to the article,
Dickens was just eight years old when The Sketchbook [of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., 1819-20] was published, but twenty years later he would send Irving a letter expressing his admiration for the Bracebridge stories.
“I wish to travel with you… down to Bracebridge Hall,” he wrote to Irving in 1841. Such a trip was never made, but that didn’t stop Dickens from using Irving’s holiday tales as his inspiration: A Christmas Carol was published just two years later, and brought the young English author lasting fame. A careful reader doesn’t need to know about Irving’s celebrity fan mail to see the influence that Crayon’s account had on the more famous, Dickensian Christmas. In Irving’s early sketch, readers can find the foundations of Dickens’ beloved scene from “Christmas Past,” a scene that authors, artists, filmmakers and merchandisers have since seized upon as the quintessence of the English holiday. If we look harder, we can also find the ancestors of Dickens’ jolly Fezziwig family in Squire Bracebridge and his hospitable clan.
You can read Irving’s essays here—check out the chapters that mention Christmas—but the one that strikes me the most is one describing Christmas games. That’s because my most prized possession is a 19th century print of David Wilkie’s “Blind Man’s Buff” (see above) that used to hang above my grandmother’s mantle. We inherited our Christmas rituals from Eleanor Fulcher Bates, and it is from her that our Christmas rituals descended. Here’s Irving:
After the dinner-table was removed the hall was given up to the younger members of the family, who, prompted to all kind of noisy mirth by the Oxonian and Master Simon, made its old walls ring with their merriment as they played at romping games. I delight in witnessing the gambols of children, and particularly at this happy holiday season, and could not help stealing out of the drawing-room on hearing one of their peals of laughter. I found them at the game of blindman’s-buff. Master Simon, who was the leader of their revels, and seemed on all occasions to fulfill the office of that ancient potentate, the Lord of Misrule, was blinded in the midst of the hall. The little beings were as busy about him as the mock fairies about Falstaff, pinching him, plucking at the skirts of his coat, and tickling him with straws. One fine blue-eyed girl of about thirteen, with her flaxen hair all in beautiful confusion, her frolic face in a glow, her frock half torn off her shoulders, a complete picture of a romp, was the chief tormentor; and, from the slyness with which Master Simon avoided the smaller game and hemmed this wild little nymph in corners, and obliged her to jump shrieking over chairs, I suspected the rogue of being not a whit more blinded than was convenient.
I find myself wondering whether the 1813 painting, which was quite famous, influenced what Irving thought he saw.
To give you one more taste of Irving’s Christmas essays, here’s a passage from “Christmas Eve”:
Supper was announced shortly after our arrival. It was served up in a spacious oaken chamber, the panels of which shone with wax, and around which were several family portraits decorated with holly and ivy. Besides the accustomed lights, two great wax tapers, called Christmas candles, wreathed with greens, were placed on a highly polished beaufet among the family plate. The table was abundantly spread with substantial fare; but the squire made his supper of frumenty, a dish made of wheat cakes boiled in milk with rich spices, being a standing dish in old times for Christmas Eve. I was happy to find my old friend, minced pie, in the retinue of the feast and, finding him to be perfectly orthodox, and that I need not be ashamed of my predilection, I greeted him with all the warmth wherewith we usually greet an old and very genteel acquaintance.
The mirth of the company was greatly promoted by the humors of an eccentric personage whom Mr. Bracebridge always addressed with the quaint appellation of Master Simon. He was a tight brisk little man, with the air of an arrant old bachelor. His nose was shaped like the bill of a parrot; his face slightly pitted with the small-pox, with a dry perpetual bloom on it, like a frostbitten leaf in autumn. He had an eye of great quickness and vivacity, with a drollery and lurking waggery of expression that was irresistible. He was evidently the wit of the family, dealing very much in sly jokes and innuendoes with the ladies, and making infinite merriment by harping upon old themes, which, unfortunately, my ignorance of the family chronicles did not permit me to enjoy. It seemed to be his great delight during supper to keep a young girl next to him in a continual agony of stifled laughter, in spite of her awe of the reproving looks of her mother, who sat opposite. Indeed, he was the idol of the younger part of the company, who laughed at everything he said or did and at every turn of his countenance. I could not wonder at it; for be must have been a miracle of accomplishments in their eyes. He could imitate Punch and Judy; make an old woman of his hand, with the assistance of a burnt cork and pocket-handkerchief; and cut an orange into such a ludicrous caricature that the young folks were ready to die with laughing.
We had 17 people at our own Christmas Eve dinner: my mother, two of my three brothers and their wives, my two sons and four grandchildren, and a niece and her companion. I played the Squire Bracebridge role with four-year-old Esmé and Alban and two-year-old Etta and experienced a deep contentment that I have been missing since the election. At least for that evening and throughout Christmas day, all seemed right with the world.
